Calling all impressionistas

June 23, 2013

This summer dress is part of "Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity."

What fashionista hasn't lingered longingly on the velvety/feathered/flowered dresses of Renoir's women? Now all Chicago can behold the stylish beauties in paintings, some here for the first time, by Renoir, Degas, Manet, Seurat and others in the final stop for "Impressionism, Fashion & Modernity." The exhibit broke attendance records at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, then moved on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It opens officially at the Art Institute of Chicago on Wednesday.

Nearly 80 works from the mid-1860s through the mid-1880s illuminate the role fashion played in defining a new consumer culture, as Paris bustled with department stores filled with ready-made clothing and middle-class shoppers. Adding dimension to the display are period dresses, parasols and gloves that capture the tactile appeal of fashion for painters, poets and the press. (The summer dress, left, is depicted in Albert Bartholome's 1881 painting, "In the Conservatory (Madame Bartholome)." Member previews run Sunday through Tuesday; the exhibit continues through Sept. 22; go to artic.edu.